Team Ocean middle hull snapped in half!

At 3pm yesterday, Yvan Bourgnon of Team Ocean and his crew set sail on board the trimaran and intent on shattering the unofficial record for a circumnavigation of Nakheel’s archipelago, which stands at 3 hours and 15 minutes. Team Ocean was on pace to break the record when the boat shattered itself.

At first, everything seemed to be going well and the boat was going flat out at 25knots of speed when suddenly the boat broke. There was a loud bang, The bow came up in the air as the central hull broke in two whilst the powerful trimaran was flying at full speed in perfect flat water. It was immediately apparent that the carbon-fibre boat’s central hull had snapped almost clean in two.

The boat skippered by Yvan Bourgnon has held numerous records, including the longest distance sailed by a 60ft trimaran in 24 hours (1006.35km) and is now believed to be heavily damaged. He had brought his boat to Dubai from Europe to show what a pure racing boat can do on the water and raise the profile of the sport in the UAE. The, Sheikh Khalid bin Zayed, was on board the trimaran as she broke up.